Faculty

Leonard S. Marcus

Author | Editor | Curator

Education: BA, magna cum laude, Yale University; MFA, University of Iowa

Author: Minders of Make-Believe: Idealists, Entrepreneurs, and the Shaping of American Children’s Literature; A Caldecott Celebration: Seven Artists and Their Paths to the Caldecott Medal; Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children’s Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became an American Icon Along the Way; Pass It Down: Five Picture-Book Families Make Their Mark; Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book; Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon; Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture-Book Teams Go To Work; The Making of Goodnight Moon: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective. Co-author: Oscar: The Big Adventure of a Little Sock Monkey. Contributor: The New York Times Book Review, column “Sight Reading,” The Horn Book. Editor: The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth; Funny Business: Conversations with Writers of Comedy

Curatorial Works Include: “Children Should Be Seen: The Image of the Child in American Picture-Book Art,” Katonah Museum of Art, Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Los Angeles Public Library; “Growing Every Which Way But Up: The Children’s Book Art of Jules Feiffer,” Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; “Golden Legacy: 65 Years of Original Art from Golden Books,” Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Chicago Public Library, Greenville County Museum, Salt Lake City Public Library, Children’s Museum of Richmond

Consultant: Bank Street College of Education, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Book Foundation, All for Kids Foundation, Norman Rockwell Museum, Book Globe Company Ltd (Japan), the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature

Awards and Honors Include: Book Prize, Children’s Literature Association. Judge: Best Illustrated Books of Year Awards, The New York Times; National Book Award; Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Awards; Carle Honors Awards of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art; Sendak Fellowship; Society of Illustrators; Ragazzi Illustration Prize, Bologna International Book Fair. Founding Trustee, Eric Carle Museum. Honorary Doctorate: Bank Street College of Education

website
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    THE ANNOTATED PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH

    The story-behind-the-story of the “Alice in Wonderland” of our time, and the great Jule Feiffer’s debut as a children’s book illustrator.

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    DEAR GENIUS: THE LETTERS OF URSULA NORDSTROM

    The funny, probing, whip-smart letters of Nordstrom, the 20th century’s visionary children’s-book editor, to the authors of Goodnight Moon, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Where the Wild Things Are, and much more.

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    MARGARET WISE BROWN: AWAKENED BY THE MOON

    My biography of the charismatic, shape-shifting author of Goodnight Moon who brought Modernism to the nursery.